Team Sports for Children
Thursday, June 5th, 2008
A report on Kids Sport in Canada has just been published which shows that from 1992 to 2007 kids involvement in team games for children went down from 57% to 51%. This corresponds to similar declines noticed in the United Kingdom. The decline is greater for boys at 10% whilst girls sports involvement has only declined by 4%.
One of the main reasons in the United Kingdom was the massive sale of sports grounds by schools which started under the Thatcher government in the 1980s. In Canada one of the reasons for the decline particularly in the urban areas was that sport is mainly organized for adults. This means that with limited resources the children seem to lose out.
In the Canadian report the most popular team sport was soccer. This was both for girls and boys and it has replaced the most popular sport in 1992 which was swimming.
The worry for parents in this decline in games for children is what kids activities can they encourage their children to do to keep them fit and healthy.